Thought I’d start a new local cricket thread for season 2023/24. Anyone get on yesterday? I’d suggest most hard wicket comps would’ve played but the vast majority of turf comps in Metropolitan Melbourne would’ve been done in by the rain from Tuesday - Thursday. We were called off Friday morning. The forecast is looking pretty bleak from Thursday onwards for this week coming up…
We played. First time I e picked up a bat since last season. A couple of late withdrawals we ended up with 9 players. We batted first and lost 3 quick wickets but managed to get to 7/123 off our overs. I got 2 of them.
They got off to a bit of a flyer and were 1/50 but we then pegged them back and got a couple of quick wickets. They ended up passing us 6 down in the second last over.
It was a pretty good effort considering we were 2 players down.
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All our Saturday games have been called off due to the mid-week rain, however I’m playing Sunday and at the moment we are still a chance to play. Likely our game will be shifted and it will be changed to a T20 match, where there will be 2 games at the same venue.
We just had scudding showers and a very strong crosswind.
Division 2 started today as an 18-team comp divided into two pools.
Divisions 3 and 4 start in a fortnight.
Managed to get half a game in today. Bowled first in a T20 and were set 126 to win. Bowlerd OK but understandably some rust there. We were 3/5 in reply (I was 0*) before the heavens opened up and the match was called off. Obviously 2 points Gaines given the poor start with the bat. Happy to have got a runout in the field, which doesn’t happen that often. Fingers crossed for better weather next week!
The first round of the VSDCA has been played but the web site is still stuck on 22 / 23 season. Did someone say “amateur hour”.
That’s because we are off the MyCricket platform and it’s now using Play HQ. Also, that VSDCA website might be obsolete if it was built off the MyCricket platform. It’s caused a lot of issues for clubs and associations even though they were given warning that it was coming in for this season and beyond. It’s change that was unnecessary as what was there with MyCricket was perfectly fine. But then again, PlayHQ is either owned by, or has significant financial backing from James Sutherland, the former CA CEO. Proof that nepotism is well and truly rife within the sport…
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PlayHQ is absolute rubbish
All of it.
Nothing but a headache.
CA looking after their mates and lining their pockets
Crooks
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More on this from an article back in 2021.
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Love to know where my $22.50 goes each year I have to “register” to play
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It’s an absolute pig of a system. It’s missing so much functionality. The ability to send out email comms to all players within PlayHQ isn’t there, which it was for MyCricket. We had player availability emails sent out every week and that was done direct out of MyCricket and it allowed you to see a collated list of all players, if they were available or not, what day they were available to play (Saturday, Sunday or both). Now clubs have been advised to create a Mailchimp account and do it through there, and the UX/practicality just isn’t there.
Player clearances were done through MyCricket Admin. Simple process that sent out notifications to all key parties when a player wanted to change clubs, and a progress bar to let you know the status of a clearance. Now they’ve gone back to filling out a paper-based form, scanning and emailing to the association because it’s not in PlayHQ. And yeah, the additional registration fee, which the clubs don’t get a cent of, is an absolute ■■■■ take.
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I’ve been working on OfficialsHQ, the umpires’ adjunct to PlayHQ, and find it very frustrating. Often you have to go back a screen to set a filter, rather than on the same screen. And there are bits missing. Guys registering, but not setting the flag that they’re an umpire, so we can’t add them to panels. Inflexible umpires’ and captains’ reports that don’t work nearly as well as the MyCricket ones.
Guys at the association keep telling me that MyCricket was quickly becoming obsolete but I’m not sure how much.
We’ve all suffered, and on Friday, somebody at Beyond Blue (the Mental Health mob) sent me a pamphlet. Clearly they’d hacked the OfficialsHQ site for administrators and were getting in early.
And I was told that $22 registration fee is for insurance, not for registrations.
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It’s the actual worst. I hate it from a user perspective, and then from an Admin perspective it’s infinitely worse.
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Yep
But we don’t matter.
We just keep paying our money and they keep telling us nothing is wrong.
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Pocket lining insurance
Both days this weekend.
Up at Dennington, the first suburb west of West Warrnambool, against one of the top sides in Hawkesdale, about 35km north of Port Fairy. Hawkesdale recruit got in the paper after 2 tons and a 65.
Hawkesdale bat first and put on about 100 for the first wicket. Captain drags on for 70 (5 sixes - small ground), then the big recruit walks in, nicks to the keeper and walks. They got about 260, Dennington got about 120. They clapped for a 50 for one of the openers. Team score was 2-55.
Three golden ducks, should be 4…straightforward c&b dropped…three catches one-handers high above the head. Freezing wind all day.
Girls’ game up at Hawkesdale today on a perfect day for cricket. Brierly Bulls were chasing 3-120 off Hawkesdale’s 25 overs. Bit hard feminising the club nicknames. You wouldn’t want to be called the Cows or the Heifers. Brierly slipped to 8-95 or so but the two girls got them through in the last over. Missed skied catch by the keeper in over 24, head-high full toss hit for 4 which gives a free hit. Crucial errors.
Been a frustrating start for me so far because in all but 1 innings I’ve got a start and not gone on with it. Aside from the 0* in a game abandoned by rain, 1, 26, 19 and 32 on the weekend. Been run out twice (once I cooked myself, the 2nd time was BBQ’d by my batting partner). Spent some good time in the middle on Saturday but another loss. The team I’m in is unrecognisable from last season, would only be 2 or 3 in the XI that played regular cricket in this grade and the others were in the lower grades at the club.
Unfortunately we had to forfeit our last 2 day game. A few injuries in the grades above and this weekend being cup weekend we had 4 players that could play both weeks. We should be good to go this week.
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We are probably missing 10 or so players from our top 2-3 grades from last year. That really affects the depth of your club, and the team I’m in has probably been hardest hit in terms of the majority of that side that won the flag last season is now playing in the 2s rather than 3s.
40 in Adelaide today so all cricket off this evening which is a shame as the cold front is meant to arrive around tea time and dropping to low 20’s tomorrow